1636- the China Venture Read online

  “Is Hansson the only possible troublemaker? What about Peter Minuit?”

  “I believe I have placated Minuit,” said Eric. “Any other comments or suggestions? Should we say anything to Judith?”

  “Definitely not,” said Martina, and the others agreed.

  “All right, then,” said Eric. “Thank you for your time.”

  As they left the room, Eric murmured to himself, “I hope I have placated Minuit.”

  April 1635

  Eric Garlow, Captain Lyell and Maarten Vries stood behind the parapet of Batavia Castle, looking down at the shipping below. The captain had a rolled-up map in hand.

  “So how soon can we depart, Captain?”

  “We can leave once the winds permit.”

  Batavia was on the northern coast of eastern Java. To come to Batavia, they had threaded their way northeastward through the Sunda Strait, separating Sumatra from Java, and then turned fully east. In doing so, they had benefited from the wind, which had been from the northwest or more occasionally from the west.

  “Ambassador Garlow, trade in east Asia is regulated by the monsoon winds. The proper course for China is north, through the Java Sea, with Sumatra and then the Malayan peninsula to our right, and Borneo to our left. But the wind right now is the northeast monsoon—actually, here and now, it comes mainly from the northwest or the north—and my Rode Draak can’t sail closer than six points to the wind.”

  “I thought the northeast monsoon only lasted until March,” said Eric.

  “It depends on who you ask, whether it ends in March, April or May. I would say that it ends in March, and that April and May are transitional. April and May are marked by calms and variable winds, with winds from the south half of the compass becoming progressively more common and those from the north half, less so.”

  Lyell concluded, “The southwest monsoon will be fully established in June, so if we linger here until then, we will be sailing directly downwind, or on the broad reach, all the way. The Rode Draak was designed to sail well under those conditions. We can probably make it to Guangzhou in a month. If we sail earlier, it will probably take longer. You might not even arrive any earlier than you would have if you had sailed in season.”

  “If you just want to get to Guangzhou before the silk fair ends, that’s in June, and a May departure should be sufficient,” said Maarten. “I think winds from the south are reasonably common in the Java Sea and the South China Sea in that month, begging your pardon, Captain Lyell. And you’re more likely to encounter a typhoon in June than in May. Although I concede that September is the most dangerous month.”

  “But right now only the Portuguese can legally trade there,” said Eric. “Even under the best of circumstances, we can expect the mandarins to hem and haw before giving us permission. So shouldn’t we give ourselves more of a grace period, by getting there earlier?”

  Maarten smothered a yawn. “My apologies. We Dutch either wait for the Chinese to bring the silks here—admittedly that’s at a higher price—or we go to the little smugglers’ coves outside Guangzhou and trade there. And for the latter, it’s best to arrive close to the silk fair, as then we pay less.”

  Eric leaned against the parapet wall. “Presumably because the smugglers have to pay less to the authorities, to look the other way. If all we cared about were silks, we would copy the Dutch. But we want to get a geological survey team up the Pearl to”—Eric suddenly thought better of talking about tungsten deposits with these men, who, after all, weren’t citizens of the USE or in Swedish service—“well, a place we think is of interest. For that we need to go to Guangzhou and speak to the mandarins.”

  “In the meantime, we can at least question the Chinese traders that come to Batavia,” Captain Lyell suggested, “and so glean up-to-date information on what’s happening in China, and what spring sailing was like last year. Rather than depending just on what the Dutch tell us, be it accurate or misleading.”

  “A good point, Captain,” said Eric, “one I should have thought of. It will be a chance for the mission staff to practice their Chinese, too. We’ll spread the word. I just hope we don’t go stir-crazy while we wait here in Batavia.”

  * * *

  Captain Lyell watched his crew as they loaded the Rode Draak with fresh provisions. He could even hear a cow “moo” as it was led on board. As soon as they had a fair wind to leave Batavia Harbor, they would be on their way.

  Acting Ambassador Garlow had requested that the Rode Draak and the Groen Feniks make as early a departure from Batavia as possible. It was not merely that he wanted to start his mission as soon as possible, or to take advantage of the silk fair in Guangzhou in June; the VOC was continuing to try to entice away his staff and the ships’ crews, and Batavia was not the healthiest of ports.

  Lyell and Vries had admitted that a skipper could try to get a head start on the ships heading north to China and Japan on the southwest monsoon of summer by making an early departure and taking what opportunities the uncertain spring winds might offer. Indeed, the southwest monsoon started earlier in the more southerly waters, so there was the hope that the ship could move with the changeover, like a car following behind a snow plow after a blizzard.

  Back in Europe, there had been some dispute as to what the best rig for a ship sailing the Europe–China route would be. Square sails—that is, sails whose spars’ neutral position was perpendicular to the line of the keel—were ideal when a ship was sailing downwind, as it would be in the Roaring Forties or with a favorable monsoon. But if you needed to claw your way upwind, fore-and-aft sails were needed, the more the better.

  Hence, the two ships had come prepared to make it easy for their crews to rerig them as barques. In the nineteenth-century nautical parlance brought by the up-timers, a barque was a vessel on which all the sails of the mizzenmast were fore-and-aft rigged. In contrast, on a ship-rigged vessel, only the lowest sail on the mizzenmast, the mizzen course or crossjack, was of the fore-and-aft type.

  The crews of the Rode Draak and the Groen Feniks had taken down their mizzen topsail yard and replaced it with a gaff. The captain of the Groen Feniks had in fact considered taking the conversion a step further, and putting fore-and-aft sails on the mainmast as well—a barkentine rig—but decided against indulging in such drastic experimentation in unfamiliar waters.

  And so, barque-rigged, off they went.

  Chapter 18

  April, 1635

  The land breeze had begun in the afternoon, with a rainy, thunderous squall, and then continued as a moderate breeze. With this filling their sails, the Rode Draak and the Groen Feniks had exchanged salutes with Batavia Fort and headed north on April 1, 1635. Among the up-timers, there was some nervous joking about April Fools’ Day.

  They were taking the “inner passage,” that is, skirting the east coasts of Sumatra, Malaya, and Vietnam, where they could take advantage of any favorable inshore winds and take refuge if the northeast monsoon developed a rebirth of vigor.

  It was the least evil. If they barreled down the center of the Java Sea and the South China Sea, as they would have if it were summer already, they would make little progress until the southwest monsoon fully set in.

  They could hug the west coasts of Borneo, Palawan and Luzon, but that path was little explored by the Dutch as it lay close to the Spanish center of power. While Manila had fallen, the ignorance of the hazards of that route remained.

  Finally, they could take the long way around, by the Straits of Macassar, then east of the Philippines where the monsoon was less pronounced, and then through the Taiwan Straits, but it would be time-consuming.

  One advantage of their chosen route was that they could visit Bangka Island, whose southern tip was about two hundred miles north of Batavia, along the way. Eric had a reason for proposing this; one of the Grantville atlases had indicated that it and nearby Belitung were major sources of tin. Tin was alloyed with copper to make bronze, and the principal European source of tin was Cornwall, England. Whi
le tin was also mined in the Erzgebirge, the Ore Mountains between Saxony and Bohemia, it would be nice to have an alternative source.

  Thanks to the presence of Mike Song in the USE mission, the visitors had developed a surprisingly warm relationship with some of the Chinese merchants living in Batavia, and they had recommended a pilot who knew the Sumatran and Malayan coasts even better than did Lyell or Vries. The pilot, in turn, had business in Guangzhou.

  Having headed north from Batavia, the first choice confronting the Rode Draak was how to pass from the Java Sea into the South China Sea: that is, whether to take the western route, the Bangka Strait between Sumatra and Bangka; the central route, the Gaspar Strait between Bangka and Belitung, or the much wider Karimata Strait further east, between Belitung and Borneo.

  The Chinese pilot they took on at Batavia, “No Leg” Huang, strongly favored the Bangka Strait, as the approach was much easier than that to the Gaspar, and there were numerous anchorages. With a fresh, steady wind and fair weather, he conceded, the Gaspar would be preferable, but those were not the conditions that faced them.

  As for the Karimata Strait, it wasn’t much used by either the Dutch or Chinese, and consequently its hazards weren’t well known, either. Moreover, it was known that its currents were very irregular, making it much more difficult to navigate by dead reckoning. Lastly, and most importantly, the further east you went, the later the southeast monsoon settled in, and that was true in both the Java Sea and the South China Sea.

  Captain Lyell decided to defer to “No Leg,” and gave the appropriate orders.

  Huang had two perfectly good legs, and therefore his moniker had been a source of bewilderment for all on board. At last, Captain Lyell asked Huang to explain it.

  “My first job in the family business was as a messenger. Some official told the family that I ran so fast, my legs were a blur, as if I had no legs.”

  The Groen Feniks, being lighter in draft than the Rode Draak, took the lead. On the pilot’s instructions, they steered north-northwest for a rock that the Dutch called the Zuyder Wachter, the South Watcher, and then bore around. After some further maneuvers, and sounding frequently, they came into waters that were twelve fathoms deep, and then, veering as needed to avoid waters that were much shallower or deeper, came into the Bangka Strait.

  The Dutch had a trading post in Palembang, on the great island of Sumatra across the Bangka Strait from Bangka Island, but it dealt mostly in pepper. Since they knew that both Palembang and Bangka were under the thumb of the militant Sultan of Makaram, the new visitors were circumspect, anchoring in a small cove rather than the main harbor, and sending Aratun the Armenian out in a small boat to find out what he could. He took a couple of tin artifacts, and a sample of tin ore, with him.

  On his return, Aratun reported that it did not appear that there was any large-scale mining of tin on either island, but he had arranged for a Chinese tradesman he had met to make further inquiries and report back to the USE mission’s friends among the Chinese merchants in Batavia. And so they left the matter; tin was of interest, but not a priority.

  They continued on north through the Bangka Strait. Here, their local pilot cautioned them to pay great attention to the ebb and flow of the tide, and to have the great ships led by a small boat, the latter sounding frequently. They took care to keep at least a league away from the coast of Sumatra. Despite the inconvenience posed by the shoal waters, the route meant that the mass of Bangka Island shielded them from any last gasps of the northeast monsoon.

  The cautious advance was tedious work, but necessary for the safety of everyone on board.

  * * *

  It had been a long day. The principal current in the Bangka Strait in early April was southward, the wrong direction, but there were crosscurrents whenever a river or stream mouth was passed. The wind had kept waxing and waning, backing and veering, forcing continual adjustments to the sails and intermittent anchoring when the wind and current were both unfavorable. After twelve hours of “stop-and-go” sailing, Captain Lyell ordered the Rode Draak to anchor for the night, and their local pilot “No Leg” guided them to a safe anchorage large enough for it and the Groen Feniks. He then went below deck for some rest.

  It being the tropics, the sun dropped quickly toward the horizon, and, once it had set, the sky darkened quickly. Boarding nets were hung across the waist of the ship, between the quarter deck and the forecastle, thus protecting the lowest, most vulnerable portion. Lanterns were lit so the deck sentries could see the waters on either side. Two of the upper deck carronades, one port and the other starboard, were manned. In addition, there were men stationed by each of the ten breechloading swivel guns; these had two-inch bores. Six of these were on the waist of the ship, and four were aloft, on the fighting tops.

  The Rode Draak had three masts, and none of these was from a single tree. Rather, each mast came in overlapping sections—lower mast, top mast, and topgallant mast—with the heel of the upper mast held to the head of the lower one by trestle and crosstrees, in turn supported by knees. The top, a platform to which the shrouds of the topsail were attached, rested above the trees, which were in turn above the yard of the course, the lowest sail.

  As originally built, the tops were of modest size, being intended just to impart a sufficiently broad angle to the shrouds. However, after the Swedes took over the ship, they had enlarged the tops, and thus the supporting structures, to make them more suitable as fighting platforms. In any event, the “fighting tops” had a rail three feet high, from which was suspended netting covered with canvas. This was, somewhat ingenuously, called the “top-armor.” While the canvas didn’t provide any actual protection from enemy fire, it did provide a modicum of concealment for someone reloading a weapon. Each top also bore one or more pintle mounts to which a swivel gun could be attached. There was one swivel mounted in each of the foretop and mizzen top, and two in the maintop.

  The Rode Draak and, behind it, the Groen Feniks, shared the quiet water of their cove with a native fishing boat. However, it departed after a few hours, leaving them at peace.

  That peace was shattered a few hours before dawn. Three large proas invaded the cove, each with two banks of oars and a cannon in the bow. One of the proas, the presumed command ship, was larger than the other two. When they were first spotted, at the entrance to the cove, by a marine in the maintop, they were perhaps two hundred yards off. All told, they appeared to be carrying about two hundred warriors. With most of these rowing, the proas looked like giant waterborne centipedes, with legs in constant motion.

  The sentries blew their whistles, and the deck officer bellowed, “All hands, prepare to repel boarders!” To make sure those below were aware that battle was imminent, the trumpeter standing by his side played a call to arms.

  There was little gap between the blowing of whistles by the sentries and the first bark of the swivel guns. These could fire one-pound balls. However, they were presently loaded with hailshot, essentially a bag filled with a dozen musket balls, weighing about a pound in toto and thus taking the same charge. The bag would tear open as it left the muzzle, causing the musket balls to disperse.

  While the swivel guns didn’t stop the attack, they did slow it down, the musket balls bringing down oarsmen and disrupting the rhythm. It took perhaps a minute to bring the first carronade into action.

  The minute felt much longer to its crew, as the proas, being heavily oared and manned, were able to cover half the distance between the entrance to the cove and the Rode Draak in the time taken by the gun drill. The time seemed all the more at a premium, given that there were limits to how far the gun barrel on the carronade’s special carriage could be depressed. In other words, if the enemy boats came alongside, the upper deck carronades couldn’t be brought to bear on them.

  With the range now one hundred yards, the two carronade crews on duty fired. One thirty-two-pound ball, six inches in diameter, struck the leftmost attacker, breaking the back of the boat, and spilling its crew
into the water. The other fell just short of the command ship, splashing its crew. Whether out of shock that they had come so near being hit themselves, or to render aid to their fellows, they stopped rowing for a moment. But only for a moment.

  “Load grapeshot,” ordered the chief gunner. Grapeshot was in quilted bags like hailshot, with the balls grouped around a spindle, but the balls were bigger. In the version fired by a thirty-two-pounder, the nine balls were almost three inches in diameter, and each weighed over three pounds. That made them as dangerous at close range to the proas as to their crews. “Fire!” This time, it was the rightmost proa that was targeted, as it had come into the lead. A substantial number of its crew were killed or wounded, and the vessel itself was holed and started taking on water.

  By now, some of the Rode Draak’s crew had come above deck, carrying muskets, rifles and grenades; others manned the guns of the gun deck, which was the first full-length enclosed deck.

  The gunports of that deck opened. The situation was too urgent to permit any gun crew to wait upon another; given enough time, the attacking boats would come around to the bow, where few guns could be brought to bear, and whose deck was lower than that of the stern, and board the Rode Draak.

  One of the lower-deck carronades fired. The good news was that its projectile, common shot since that was the easiest to load in haste, struck the command ship squarely, reducing it to splinters.

  The bad news was that the carronade crew, accustomed to long guns, in the excitement had used the standard long-gun charge—one quarter of the shot weight—rather than the one-twelfth charge appropriate to the more lightly built carronade. As a result, her recoil was so strong as to break the bolts holding her slide carriage to the hull. Fortunately, no one was standing directly behind the cannon as it came free, and, since it wasn’t on a four-wheeled truck mount, it didn’t have the freedom of motion that had given rise to the expression “loose cannon on deck.” Still, the accident caused considerable disruption on the lower deck.